Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has hit out at David Cameron’s proposal to strip green levies from energy bills, claiming it would cost jobs and reduce support for poor households.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced a review of competition within the energy market yesterday, signalling he wanted to "get to grips" with green charges driving up energy bills.

However, Mr Clegg said: "It wasn't something I was fully expecting and not something I fully agree with."

He went on to say he did not accept green levies were the main reason for price hikes, putting 60% of the increase down to rising wholesale costs in the energy market.

Mr Clegg, who also rejected Labour leader Ed Miliband's call for a price freeze as a "con" which would "see prices go up, jobs go down, investment go down", attacked the "new theory emerging on the right of British politics which says it's all the fault of us caring about the environment".

He said he would hold talks with the Prime Minister to find a way forward, which would involve testing the various charges and could see some - such as the warm homes discount worth £135 to two million poor households - moved to general Government spending paid for through taxes.

But he added: "I'm not frankly entirely sure what rolling back green levies, if removing all green levies which help two million people on very low incomes, which help support thousands of jobs in our green renewable energy sector, if that is what is meant I think that would be an own goal."

Setting out the next stages Mr Clegg said the Government would see if its objectives could be "delivered in a more cost-effective way".

He said: "We will stress test all these different levies. If we can deliver those objectives of keeping the lights on, insulating people's homes, helping the fuel poor, supporting our green economy for less - of course I don't want to see an extra penny on people's bills than is actually necessary - that is what we will do, as we always do in the coalition whatever our differences, we resolve them."

A Downing Street spokesman said discussions on how to "roll back" green levies from energy bills would take place within Government between now and the autumn statement on December 4.

The spokesman did not rule out the possibility that the burden of the levies - which add £112 to average annual energy bills - might be shifted on to general taxation or be paid for with reductions in spending elsewhere.

"What's clear is the Prime Minister's policy on this, which is to roll back some of the green levies, and to look at those in the work that's going on between now and the autumn statement," he told a Westminster media briefing. "Clearly the whole Government - the relevant parts - will be involved in the discussions."

Asked whether the row over energy, coming hard on the heels of differences about the operation of free schools, meant that the Government was "unravelling", the spokesman said: "The coalition is intact."

Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg continue to work "highly effectively" together, he added.